My Trip To Kabul

Hello Everybody

I have got something to tell you about my trip to Kabul and I hope it might be interesting for you in case if you get chance to visit Kabul. Recently I went to Kabul to visit my family and I stayed there for almost two months. My parents live in Kabul, this is where I was born and before I left my country I had never had any chances to visit any places or any proveniences of Afghanistan because of the war but in this trip I visited a lots of places all over Afghanistan especially in Kabul such as Babour Garden, Bagh Bala, Bala Hisar, and King palace ……. As you know Afghanistan has a history that goes back 5000 years, and rich cultural, traditions. It has produced beautiful buildings, decorative tiles and mosaics, and also has tradition of poetry and song. However it was a wonderful trip for me so I thought that it might be interesting for you guys to know what is interesting in Kabul to be visited.

The first place that I visited in Kabul was the Babour Garden and you know that

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Babour Garden is one of the oldest existing Mughal gardens and the first tomb-garden of that period. It was founded, inspired by the Timurid tradition, between 1504 and 1525 by the first emperor of the Mughal dynasty, Zahir-ud Din Mohammad Babur (1483-1530), as one of many gardens just in Kabul. Although Babur never returned to Kabul, he desired to be buried there. After the consolidation of Mughal power, Babur´s

Kabul City
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successors Jahangir (r. 1605-1627) and Shah Jahan (r. 1627-1658) traveled to Kabul to pay their respect to their ancestor. Both patrons aged comprehensive building programs in order to beautify the garden. Later on, the garden decayed and was extensively re-built in the late 1900's by Amir Abdur Rahman (r. 1880-1901). Shortly afterwards, King Nadir Shah (r. 1929-1933) again demolished many of these structures and again changed the western terraces.

After visiting the Babour Garden I and some friends of mine decided to go outside of the city, but were not sure where to go. Every body insisted to go wherever they prefer to go. Finally we decided to go some where for picnic than I realized that Qargha Lake would be a nice place to for picnic and as soon as I said how about, Qargha Lake for picnic guys? All of them replied that Qurgha Lake is such a good place for picnic. On the next day we all went to Qargha, and Qurgha is a wonderful place for picnic .

And after staying there for six hours we headed to Paghman and after a two hour drive, we finally arrived to Paghman. As soon as we got to Paghman we decided to have lunch at the restaurant near the The Arch, which celebrates a military victory of King Amanullah in the War of Independence in 1919.And today it used as a park for picnic infact the arch was wonderful here are some photos of the Arch.

I had to come back to city before it got dark to buy some gifts for my friends because traffic in Kabul is crazy. For instance if you want to get to the city at five, you have to leave two hours before five to get there. As soon as I got to shopping mall I started shopping quickly and I got a good deal, I bought a sonny digital camera for three hundred dollars which its regular price is six hundred ninety nine dollars. Here is the photo of the where I bought my camera.

 My trip to Kabul was wonderful. I met all of my childhood friends that I hadn't seen since I left Afghanistan. Some of them got married and some of them are still single like me. I thought that they wouldn't recognize me if they saw me, but they did recognize me, we had a lots of fun and I won't forget my trip to Kabul it was amazing .

The third place that I impatiently wanted to visit in Kabul was the Kabul museum, you know that Kabul museum is Afghanistan’s national museum and still is one of the richest cultural repositories in the world. The National Museum once covered 50,000 years of history, and held one of the worlds greatest multi cultural antique collections: Persian, Indian, Chinese, Central Asian, Greco-Roman, Arab and the most elegant antiquities from Alexandria, Ashokan, Akhamansheed, Greek, Budd-hist, Kanishkan, Zoroastrian and Muslim periods. For thousands of years, Afghanistan was a crossroad for trade from India, Iran, and Central Asia. As a result, many treasures and artifacts have been discovered and collected.

 The Kabul Museum is the most comprehensive record of Central Asian history. Many of its pieces have been dated as far back as pre-historic times. One of the museum's largest displays was the magnificent Bagram Collection. Discovered in 1939, by archaeologists excavating a Kushan fort. It contained an amazing 1,800 pieces from India, Rome, Greece, Egypt, and Central Asia. The Kabul Museum also had one of the largest displays of Greek and Roman coins found near Kabul. This collection was a historical treasure, as it contained coins from numerous civilizations dating from the 8th century B.C. to the late 19th century.

At one time, Buddhism flourished in Afghanistan and this sculpture is proof of this. This image of Buddha's head is from Shotorak and it stands 22 cm tall. The mass like quality is typical of many of the late Gandhara Buddha images.

This coin found in Kabul, shows the head of the goddess Athena. These coins were imported by Greek colonies who were transplanted to Afghanistan by Persian rulers before Alexander the Great conquered the area.

This painted clay mask stands 19 cm tall and represents the face of a demon. The style is similar to stucco decorations of a cave in Bamiyan. May be dated 7th Century AD.